I've been experimenting a lot with different ways of aiming at the range. The way I learned, and still shoot for accuracy, is to focus on the front sight with my dominant eye, taking time to line up the shot. I find blacked-out rear notch sights to be the most helpful for this...or at least a differently colored front sight.
But this kind of aiming sucks when trying to come up quickly on target, or when under simulated stress. I get tripped up in trying to focus on aligning those sights, and I take way too long--or else I rush it and miss pretty badly.
OK, so enter "target focused shooting" with both eyes open and focused on the target. So long as I have a bright front sight, I can get the "flash picture" pretty well and at least know I'm aiming in the general direction of the center-mass. Out to about 20 feet, I can still see the front sight well enough to get a vague alignment without having to shift my focus there. My accuracy isn't much worse than it is when rushing with one-eye, front sight focus. In fact I think it's better, or at least I can usually hit a sheet of printer paper pretty quickly.
On one of my guns I installed the Big Dot XS Sights, just to see what they were all about. After a brief period of adjustment, I found that I can do much better with a flash sight picture with these than any other sights. So I can get my first shot on target pretty quickly and pretty accurately.
But what I've realized lately is that, once I pick up the rate of fire, I really don't have time to gain any sight picture worth talking about. I've adjusted my grip to a "thumbs at the target" orientation, such that I worry more about where I point my thumbs than about exactly where the sights are. And I've found that with some practice, out to 20 feet, I can still hit that 8.5x11 sheet pretty accurately (about 80% hits) without using my sights at all. Switching to a life-size silhouette at that same distance, I can land every hit in a zone that would surely slow someone down.
So where I'm going with all this rambling is this: if someone becomes proficient at point-shooting without their sights, then (for defensive use) is there really any meaningful middle ground between un-aimed point shooting, and carefully aligned target shots? Seems like the flash sight pictures, Big Dots, fiber optics, etc. just kind of fade out of the picture?
Thoughts? I've seen some videos of people shooting accurately without sights installed on their guns at all. Now I'm not those guys But evidently it's possible.
But this kind of aiming sucks when trying to come up quickly on target, or when under simulated stress. I get tripped up in trying to focus on aligning those sights, and I take way too long--or else I rush it and miss pretty badly.
OK, so enter "target focused shooting" with both eyes open and focused on the target. So long as I have a bright front sight, I can get the "flash picture" pretty well and at least know I'm aiming in the general direction of the center-mass. Out to about 20 feet, I can still see the front sight well enough to get a vague alignment without having to shift my focus there. My accuracy isn't much worse than it is when rushing with one-eye, front sight focus. In fact I think it's better, or at least I can usually hit a sheet of printer paper pretty quickly.
On one of my guns I installed the Big Dot XS Sights, just to see what they were all about. After a brief period of adjustment, I found that I can do much better with a flash sight picture with these than any other sights. So I can get my first shot on target pretty quickly and pretty accurately.
But what I've realized lately is that, once I pick up the rate of fire, I really don't have time to gain any sight picture worth talking about. I've adjusted my grip to a "thumbs at the target" orientation, such that I worry more about where I point my thumbs than about exactly where the sights are. And I've found that with some practice, out to 20 feet, I can still hit that 8.5x11 sheet pretty accurately (about 80% hits) without using my sights at all. Switching to a life-size silhouette at that same distance, I can land every hit in a zone that would surely slow someone down.
So where I'm going with all this rambling is this: if someone becomes proficient at point-shooting without their sights, then (for defensive use) is there really any meaningful middle ground between un-aimed point shooting, and carefully aligned target shots? Seems like the flash sight pictures, Big Dots, fiber optics, etc. just kind of fade out of the picture?
Thoughts? I've seen some videos of people shooting accurately without sights installed on their guns at all. Now I'm not those guys But evidently it's possible.